


wherever we are (we're never apart)

by pastelprinceyy



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Cooking, Fluff, Heist, M/M, Temporary Long Distance Relationships, stream night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:47:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29437758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastelprinceyy/pseuds/pastelprinceyy
Summary: "It wasn’t that he was tired of being on the heist; it was that he was dreadfully tired of not having Juno around.Who knew that his detective would leave such a mark on his life after a year of walking back into it."Nureyev and Rita return after a heist.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev & Rita, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, Rita & Juno Steel
Comments: 2
Kudos: 55
Collections: TPP Valentine's Exchange





	wherever we are (we're never apart)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [autumninfall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/autumninfall/gifts).



> Happy Valentines Day!
> 
> I absolutely loved working on this fic for the TPP Valentines Day exchange. I hope everyone enjoys, especially Glenn (who this gift is for).
> 
> Hope everyone has a fantastic day!!! <3

“Good morning, babe-“ are the first words to leave Juno’s mouth as he rolls over in bed and opens his eye. When his eye lands on a vacant spot next to him in bed, his brain begins whirring out as many worst-case-scenarios and panic-inducing-possibilities. It’s when his comms light up a few seconds later that he remembers where his partner went.

  
“Good morning, my dear detective. Rita and I should be done with this heist and back by the end of the day. I miss you, so so much” is what the message on his comms reads, followed by a heart and kissing emote. Juno sighs, a smile spreading on his face while his brain calms down and gets caught up to the present. Just one more day until Nureyev and Rita both returned from their heist to restock Vespa’s medbay. A few more hours, and he’ll hear all about it from them both.

  
“Miss you too, Nureyev. See you tonight.” He shoots back before climbing out of bed. Stretching, Juno takes a quick look around his room. While he and Nureyev hadn’t fully moved into one shared space, Juno’s room was slowly becoming their room. A small pile of their clothes sat in the corner, ready to be washed whenever Juno folded the clean basket. He made a mental note to get around to that before Nureyev was back on board. Not that the thief would particularly care, but Juno still tried to keep his space relatively clean as a place to decompress, an idea Jet gave to him when Juno saw his nearly spotless room.

  
“ _A clean room means one less thing to think about_.” He remembered the big guy saying.

  
And hey, it worked pretty well so far.

  
Juno threw on some clothes and slippers, double-checking the time on his comms before heading to the kitchen. It was a little bit later than he usually was woken up by Nureyev, but the kitchen was still empty by the time he got in there. He made himself a cup of coffee and went back to scrolling through his comms and texting Nureyev. He sat down at the table, waiting for the rest of his family to wake up and for Buddy to start the day off with a meeting.

* * *

“Miss you too, Nureyev. See you tonight.”

  
Nureyev smiled as he looked at the text from Juno. It wasn’t that he was tired of being on the heist; it was that he was dreadfully tired of not having Juno around.

  
Who knew that his detective would leave such a mark on his life after a year of walking back into it.

  
He sat up in the hotel bed, grabbing his glasses off the side table, and blinked the sleep out of his eyes. Despite the dreadfully uncomfortable beds (especially with the fact that they bordered on too short for his legs) and the absence of the familiar body next to him at night, Nureyev slept better than he did the whole heist.

  
He chalked it up to the exhaustion from the end of the heist the day before, definitely not the peace that came over him when he realized he would be home the following evening.  
  
He heard a quiet _tap tap tap_ on his hotel room, and, realizing that Rita wasn’t in her hotel bed across the room from him, assumed it was just her coming up with breakfast for the two of them. A small ritual that she had developed, bringing breakfast for the two of them each morning over the past week. Peter imagined it was one leftover from her days of working with Juno (given his usually lacking eating habits). While Peter usually just picked at the food she brought up (never really felt hungry during the heists), it was still a lovely ritual to have.  
  
“Come in, Rita.” He called out, getting out of bed completely.  
  
“Good morning Mistah Ransom!” Rita said as she unlocked and opened the door, a platter of food precariously balanced in her other hand. “Sorry if I woke you up- did you know that there was free breakfast downstairs? I grabbed ya some- I know you don’t always eat breakfast, but I figured with the last steps of the heist today you should be ready to take on the day! Oh, it’s terribly exciting ain’t it? We got to go steal some supplies for Miss Vespa’s research an’ for Mistah Jet’s car- oh it’s just like one of the streams I used to watch where-“ Peter smiled as Rita went off about her stream. It was an interesting one, from the bits that Peter could pick out. As Rita talked, she laid out the food and sat criss-cross on his bed, patting down across from her to invite him to sit down with her. He did, grabbing one of the paper plates she brought up with her and grabbing some of the fruit she had brought up with her. There they sat, eating breakfast and just enjoying the morning before their job began. Occasionally Peter would introject with a question here and there, the friendship between the two of them finally having moved beyond just ‘I’m dating your best friend/former boss/our other crew member, so we have to get along’ into a more comfortable ‘I enjoy your presence and would count you as a friend.’ It was only when Peter quickly looked at his comms to check on the time that he realized how long they’d been talking, and how much work they still had left before the Carte Blanche picked them up.  
  
“Rita, not to interrupt our lovely conversation, but I do believe we need to finish the last of our work, hm?”  
  
“Oh! Right, Mistah Ransom.” She nodded, putting down her plate with determination, “What d’ya need me to do?” Peter smiled when she asked as if he oversaw the heist. He knew Rita, knew that she was used to being told what to do instead of telling others what to do, but with this last step of the heist and the fact she was better than anyone else with computers, it was really ‘her time to shine,’ as Buddy said.  
  
“No, Rita, what do you need me to do?”

* * *

It had been a few hours since Peter’s last message, and Juno was getting antsy. At the family meeting that morning, Buddy outlined the last few steps of their heist- how they needed to wipe any sign that they were there, make a quick stop by a marketplace nearby to trade the last of their goods for what was still needed, before being picked up by the Carte Blanche around dinner time on their ship- and Juno was just marking down the hours, and the steps still left until he saw his partner and his friend once again.  
  
It was around his fourth pace around the ship that he realized that he needed something better to distract himself. Almost everyone else had some task to do before Peter and Rita were getting picked up- Buddy was the only one still in contact while they finished their jobs, Jet was making sure the Carte Blanche was set to land in an hour or so- the only people without some assigned job was Vespa and Juno. And even Vespa found something to do, re-organizing the medbay while she waited for her supplies.  
  
He passed by the kitchen again, a plan formulating in his mind. He started looking through the cabinets and the fridge, trying to find a dinner he could make for the crew. He took out his comms and flipped through some recipes he’d saved over the years. Lately, the list took on more varied ideas- his family telling him about various foods they’d had growing up and him working on replicating them. Before the Carte Blanche, his recipes were mainly just trying to use up what food he had on the days he could convince himself to cook.  
  
He picked a recipe that seemed doable, making sure he had the ingredients, before going to finish getting ready.

* * *

Peter felt a sense of relief as they traded in the last of their goods for the supplies. This had been a low-stakes mission- very little danger for him or Rita- but he still felt on edge the whole time. Rita held on to his hand as they passed through the crowd unnoticed, trusting him to lead her while she finished hacking into the cameras in the area and wiping them of any proof of their existence. She was focused in, mumbling slightly to herself as she turned off the camera near the alleyway they were about to go through.  
  
Before their heist, Rita came to him late at night. Ever since she learned his name (thankfully locking down any files of his existence as Peter Nureyev, without looking through them too closely), he explained bits and pieces of his past to her. Nothing too exposing- just the details to explain why his name needed to remain a secret. The night she came to him, she was worried about him showing up on cameras, so they planned out exactly how to avoid this if they didn’t wipe all the cameras. It warmed his heart, really, to have Rita care so much about his anonymity.  
  
To know that Rita, Juno, and the rest of his… his family cared about him.  
  
Peter glanced a look at the hacker to see what she was doing. His face mask covered up most of his face and blended them in with the crowd, but she still diligently deleted the last bits of evidence they were there. As they turned the corner to cut through an alleyway, she turned the camera off, just long enough for them to pass.  
  
He was impressed. Usually, he spent days after his jobs trying to wipe the last bits of his existence. Even then, he was paranoid that he’d left something behind. But she was sure of herself, turning off her comms as the camera switched back.  
  
On the other side of the alleyway, the pair saw the Carte Blanche- their home- landing, and felt relief. Peter was home, and the heist went well, and he would soon see his girlfriend again.

* * *

Juno was a little too busy in the kitchen to see his boyfriend and his friend reboard. He knew that the pair would be quickly whisked off to hand the supplies to Jet and Vespa and go clean up before dinner anyways. Still, his chest felt much lighter knowing they were back. Every time he moved to check on some part of the meal- a pretty straightforward version of a dish Nureyev told him about that consisted of noodles and a curry sauce- his eyes flickered to the metal doorframe leading into the kitchen.  
  
It was as he was finishing up the dish that he saw Nureyev leaning against the doorframe. He was dressed pretty simply, a white long-sleeved blouse on top of a black pair of pants, but Juno still thought he was the prettiest man in the universe.  
  
The man could’ve been wearing his fanciest suit or could’ve shown up in just his boxers, and Juno would still think he was gorgeous.  
  
He smiled, putting a lid on the dish and walking over to Nureyev. The thief simply smiled as Juno wrapped his arms around him.  
  
“Missed you.” He mumbled as Peter hugged him back.  
  
“Dear, I was only gone a few days,” He replied, but he knew precisely how Juno felt, “Though, it felt like years.” He got a small snort out of the detective at that, knowing how cheesy that line was. When Juno pulled away from the hug, he leaned up to kiss Nureyev.  
God. I missed him.

* * *

Soon enough, everyone had finished their dinners, and the kitchen was being cleaned. As Rita and Jet finished washing the dishes from dinner, discussions of their post-heist stream night began.  
  
Not that it mattered what stream was picked- it rarely did. Especially after a heist. Usually, people would doze off on the couch, or someone would tell a story of how the job went, and the stream would go unwatched.  
  
In this case, all the attention was turned towards Rita as she told everyone about the heist.  
Juno sat in the corner of the couch with Peter’s head resting in his lap. He played lazily with his hair as they listened attentively to Rita as if the thief hadn’t been there and the rest of the family hadn’t planned the heist.  
  
“-an’ then we took the medicine and- it was just like a stream- the alarms were goin off and we calmly walked out as if we didn’t do nothin and Mistah Ransom- you shoulda seen him- we almost got caught and he just came up with some story bout how we were supposed to be there!” Rita flapped her hands excitedly while she told them the story, “He was like ‘Ah yes, you see, we are testing the security system, nothing to worry about’ except they were supposed to worry about it!” Juno laughed as she mimicked his boyfriend, looking down at him.  
  
“Well, to be fair, it wasn’t anything to worry about. Probably didn’t even notice we took some of their medication.” Peter smiled as he spoke before looking up to Juno.  
  
  
Juno couldn’t help but smile, too.


End file.
